Why the Church needs New Monasticism now more than ever

****I am working on a project and found this unpublished article I wrote years ago. I'm publishing this unfinished post now so I can put it in a folder to revisit in the future, assuming no-one is still around on this long abandoned webpage to see it!****

The current political environment is inescapable, and it should be. You and I could choose to "take a break from it all" and focus only on those directly in front of us, and perhaps it is important to do so for a short time and for our own sanity.

However, as followers of Christ, we cannot stick our heads in the sand and hope that this whole thing blows over. The problem is, that many of us could easily do that. We are insulated from the most vulnerable in our society. We feel that we lack the resources to help. We don't know what to do, anyway. Anyway, isn't being a Christian all about being holy and saving people from Hell? Isn't the focus on justice and social services a little misguided for us anyway?

Those last two statements would take a whole book to address, and many more educated and eloquent than I have done so. I'll try to think of and share some good resources if you are looking to learn more (the life of Christ is a good place to start, though).

New Monasticism is a growing yet still fringe movement popularized by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove in the early 2000's. It has twelve guiding principles, but I'm only going to discuss the eight that most apply to the urgent situation that the Church is facing today.

1. Relocation to the "abandoned places of Empire" [at the margins of society]

• As Christians, love for our neighbor is paramount to our Christian practice. Love for God and neighbor are the two greatest commandments, with all others falling somewhere underneath those two. The problem is, that when we who live in privelege isolate ourselves in wealthy communities with good schools are safe neighborhoods, we lose touch with our greater neighbor. Much of the church, the segment that likely has the most resources is so far removed from those being affected by these decisions being made about immigrants, refugees, victims of violence and students stuck in failing schools that it seems we don't believe they exist. Or maybe they seem so "other" from us that it is hard to have compassion. Either way, we as the Church have got to move outside of the comfortable lives we've built for ourselves and learn what it means to live incarnationally. Again, we have an excellent example of this in Christ, who showed us how God is willing to move from a place of ultimate goodness to this beautiful shithole we call Earth.2. Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us

1. Hospitality to the stranger
2. Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation
3. Nurturing common life among members of an intentional community
4. Care for the plot of God’s earth given to us along with support of our local economies
5. Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18
6. Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life